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Deborah Haarsma serves as the President of BioLogos, a position she has held since January 2013. Previously, she served as professor and chair in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

N.T. Wright is a leading biblical scholar, former Bishop of Durham in the Church of England, and current Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at St. Mary's College in the University of St. Andrews.

N.T. Wright and the Resurrection

Part 3 of our review of N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Scripture focuses on the third chapter, “Can a Scientist Believe in the Resurrection?” As Wright notes with tongue firmly in cheek, one answer to the title question, is of course, “Sure! I’ve seen it done!” As recent surveys have shown, many scientists believe in a personal God who answers prayer, and in the U.S., many of those are Christians, for whom the the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is central to their faith.1

The question Wright wrestles with here is different: should a scientist believe in the resurrection? We might have expected Wright to lead by citing evidence for the resurrection. This sort of evidential apologetics has been ably tackled by many Christian thinkers.2 The evidence matters of course, and Wright deals with it, but he is more interested in assumptions than in a battle over data. He explores what motivates the question in the first place. His answer is that it depends on how we know—what the philosophers call epistemology.

At this point, of course, the scientist in me was tempted to say, “Enough with philosophy. Let’s get to the data!”, but I have read enough of Wright’s work to know that patience is rewarded. He quickly dismisses naïve scientism: if we think that science can exhaustively explain feelings of beauty or our love for those dear to us then, as Sir Peter Medawar pointed out long ago, we are seriously mistaken.3 But Wright just as quickly dispels any notion that an easy solution is to spiritualize the resurrection as some sort of private mental experience of the disciples: “[r]esurrection in the first century meant people who were physically thoroughly dead becoming physically thoroughly alive again…resurrection therefore necessarily impinges on the public world (44)."

This sounds an awful lot like something open to the scientist, whose stock and trade is the public analysis of nature. So should we seek a scientific explanation for the resurrection? Not exactly, says Wright. The resurrection is history, and so it differs from science: “[S]cience studies the repeatable, while history studies the unrepeatable(44).” Wright reminds us that the historian, like the scientist, usually makes assumptions about what is possible, and here one’s openness to possibility is heavily conditioned by worldview. Even granting this point, however, Wright acknowledges that “faced with the thoroughly repeatable experiment of what happens to dead bodies (45)," some evidence is in order.

Wright discusses the evidence lightly here; he has dealt with this in great detail in his monumental The Resurrection of the Son of God (see the blog post by Jim Stump), his accessible Surprised by Hope,4 and other articles.5 First, he dispels the notion of what C. S. Lewis might call “chronological snobbery”: Ancients knew dead people stayed dead just as we moderns do. A geneticist like myself cannot help but smile at Wright’s next move. He describes Christian expectations as unique “mutations” of Jewish ideas. First, early Christian writers are unified about the centrality of the resurrection. As the Apostle Paul puts it, “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied."6 Significantly, however, resurrection is a split event: it happened to Jesus in history as Messiah, anticipating what will happen to all at the end of history. For Wright, this shift in thinking demands historical explanation.

That leads Wright to consider the primary written sources: the Gospels. He notes the notorious differences in the stories. Using an analogy he has used before,7 Wright recounts the fateful tale of Ludwig Wittgenstein and his poker. As with the brandishing of hot metal by the renowned philosopher, so with the resurrection: “surface discrepancies do not mean that nothing happened…they are a reasonable indication that something remarkable happened (52)."

Wright then goes on to deal with the strangeness of the Gospel accounts. The prominence of female eyewitnesses, the lack of idealization regarding Jesus’ death, and the downright odd way in which he appears and disappears all argue against later fabrication. For Wright, the stories reflect the events as they happened.

Wright then circles back to the original topic. On the one hand, Wright poses a question to the “scientific” historian. If this is the best explanation, as shocking as it is – can we accept it? This is a key question. My colleagues might grudgingly say, “Well, all right. There is something here that is hard to explain, but look – dead people stay dead. There must be another explanation.” Here Wright brings worldview back into play: “I respect that position, but…it is…a matter of choice, not a matter of saying that something called scientific historiography forces us to take that route (57)."

On the other hand, lest Christians simplistically say, “Aha! I knew scientists were a closed-minded bunch!”, Wright then presses them to move beyond wooden rationalism: “The most important decisions we make in life are not taken by post-Enlightenment left-brain rationality alone (59)." Wright seeks a rational faith, but faith nonetheless: a “faith in Jesus risen from the dead transcends but includes what we call history and what we call science (61)." For Christians, belief in the resurrection also provides hope, and, ultimately, something more: “If we are even to glimpse this new world, let alone enter it, we will need a different kind of knowing…an epistemology that draws from us not just the cool appraisal of quasi-scientific research but the whole-person engagement and involvement for the best shorthand is ‘love’… (62).“ This sounds very much like what John Polkinghorne terms “motivated belief”, as discussed nicely by Ted Davis in a recent BioLogos blog series.

Where does this leave the average Christian, especially a Christian who is a scientist at a major research university? First, Wright’s piece is a reminder that believing in one of the central claims of Christian faith is reasonable. Second, he reminds us of the centrality of love. Using evidence as a bludgeon rarely works; blunt instruments usually cause blunt force trauma. My colleagues and I are not simply rational automata, but whole persons with motivations that include, but almost always extend beyond, mere evidence. Wright compares his epistemology of love to the love of a dedicated scientist for her craft. This kind of commitment is something that my colleagues can affirm, and can serve as a touchpoint between us to dialogue on larger issues. Finally, Wright reminds us that robust Christian faith takes evidence on board, but fuses reason with faith, hope and love. And, to quote Wright (quoting Paul) “the greatest of these is love.”

About the Author

Jeff Hardin is Professor and Chair of the Department of Zoology and Faculty Director of the Biology Core Curriculum at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focuses on basic mechanisms of early embryonic development. He is a member of the Board of Directors of BioLogos.

"What kind of evidence would somebody need to have in order to be rationally compelled to say that an event was a miracle? That person would have to know that this event could not possibly be explained by future science. But not only is such a belief unwarranted, it’s also bad for future science to believe it."

These provocative words are written by Princeton philosopher Hans Halvorson (a Christian), in an article that itself provoked some good discussion when we posted it last week.

Check out the full article (link in comments), and then respond to the quote above. Does calling something a "miracle" put it in danger of being debunked by future scientific advances? Is there a different way of thinking about the concept of a miracle, that might satisfy his concerns? Feel free to discuss below. ... See moreSee less

Hard for me to see that the Incarnation is not a miracle. For others , God could be working on a quantum level?? But does the latter fall into”God of the Gaps?”

5 hours ago · 1

Amen🌀 Jesus doesn't care about Alabama Crimson Tide 🏈 football. Instead, He loves 🌀 Spring and the start of ⚾ baseball season. That's why He started His own story, "In the Big inning..." Just watch 🌀 His wind-up! You need to start reading your 📖 Bible!

3 hours ago

One thing for sure, it is more a philosophical question than a religious one.

7 hours ago · 2

Great article. In answer to you question about a different way of thinking about miracles that would "satisfy his concern", to me it would make sense to explain a miracle in terms of something that everyone (religious and non-religious alike) would have no explanation for, given our current understanding of science.

Science will never describe the full expanse of reality. Science is not geared to that end. This is basic knowledge.
Reason is the handmaiden of faith because faith takes us where reason cannot go. As such, the only thing that will ever describe the fill expanse of reality is faith supernaturally given by God, i.e. God graciously enlightening the intellect. Reason gives way to faith because reason is limited in its capacity to describe reality.
This is not to say reason is not essential. It is the handmaiden of faith because it is a true and good servant to faith. As such faith and reason never contradict, but faith does transcend reason.

10 hours ago · 5

I'm tired of these types of questions constantly being proposed. It was not a scientist who discovered that dead human beings do not rise from the dead (which is different than Jesus resurrection) it was simple human experience. Therefore, the question is rather silly to ask. My first reply is to ask: who cares if Jesus resurrection contradicts science? My second reply is to make the observation that this question is phrased in such a way that science is presupposed as the final arbiter of truth claims like the resurrection of Jesus. Thirdly, how exactly could scientists study the resurrection of Jesus? Scripture tells us that God raised Jesus from the dead. Can science study this claim? Fourth, it would be one thing to subject the resurrection to some sort of scientific investigation ( I know not what or how) and a completely different thing to study what the resurrection of Jesus means for me or you personally. It seems Biologos is in need of some good theologians and philosophers to add to this conversation. Finally, this question smacks of a form of Evidentialism that would make faith subject to the vagarities of evidence. In the end I have to affirm that it matters little to me if the resurrection of Jesus did contradict science. On another note, one could ask: whose "science" and which scientists?

3 hours ago · 1

Exactly so.

11 hours ago · 1

Mmmmmm, I would say that a resurrection is contradictory to observed evidence, but that's fine. A God that is truly supernatural would act supernaturally at times. Although, I suppose God could whip up a truly natural Star Trek hypospray to overcome the decay process and relaunch the body's systems.